May 5 2022

Audience tickets are now on sale for the Corporate Choir Challenge Concert on Friday 1 July 2022 at the Federation Concert Hall. Make sure to let your friends and family now to lock in their tickets now!

May 4 2022

A reminder that if you have not already done so please get your request for a rehearsal with Rachel and Amanda in ASAP.  Please include where, when and what time you would like Rachel and Amanda to work with you. Can you please also let Sarah know if you need us to bring a keyboard to your rehearsal. Once we have all that information Sarah can start organising getting everyone together in the same place at the same time.

Also if you can please give an indication of the approximate number of members in your choir that would be appreciated.  We need to allocate your choir seats in Federation Concert Hall for the actual performance before we can start selling tickets to the general public.

Happy rehearsing see  you all soon.

March 18

Online applications have closed for the 2022 Corporate Choir Challenge. If there are any choirs still interested to participate they will be able to apply directly to the Corporate Choir Team till Friday the 6th May.

Currently, we have 10 choirs competing and approximately 215 singers. Which is a fantastic number of participants to have involved in this wonderful concert. The choirs involved are:

• Calvary all care
• Mission Song Birds from Hobart City Mission
• DoE-Ray-Me from the Department of Education
• Sticky Stones and Secrets – Federal Hotels
• Voicequake – The Friends School
• Power Chords – Hydro Tas
• Habeus Chorus – Law Society
• Tourism Tas
• Unitunes – UTAS
• ABC News Department

Venue The Friends School Music Department

Saturday 18^th June

9am -11am                   Calvary All Care Choir

10am-12pm                  Power Chords  – Hydro Tasmania

11am-1pm                    Hobart City Mission

1pm-3pm                     Habeus Chorus – Law Society

3pm -5pm                   ABC Hobart News Team

Sunday 19th June

9am -11am                   Tourism Tasmania

10am-12pm                  Unitunes – UTAS

11am-1pm                    Voicequake – The Friends School

1pm-3pm                     DoE-Ray-Me  – Department of Education

3pm -5pm                      Sticky Stones and Secrets – Federal Hotel Gorup

Venue The Farrall Centre – The Friends School

Sunday 26^th June

Please be ready to move on stage by your start time.  This will mean you will need to have your choir at The Farrall Centre at least 15 minutes before.  If you have any props please bring them to this rehearsal.

ON STAGE TIMES

8.30am -9.10am                                    Calvary All Care

9.15am – 9.55am                                  UTAS

10.00am – 10.40am                              The Friends School

10.45am – 11.25am                              Hydro Tas

11.30am – 12.10pm                              ABC News Hobart

12.15 pm – 12.45pm                             LUNCH

12.45pm – 1.25pm                                 DOE

1.30pm – 2.10pm                                  Tourism Tas

2.15pm – 2.55pm                                  Federal Hotel Group

3.00pm – 3.40pm                                  Law Society

3.45pm – 4.25pm                                  Hobart City Mission

MAY 2 – Please get your rehearsal date requests in by Monday May 2nd to Sarah, and we will confirm your rehearsal dates by Friday May 6th.

Saturday/Sunday 18^th/19th June- The Friends School Music Department, North Hobart
(Final details and timetable for these dates will be based on the number of choirs in the Challenge.
This will be organised within the next few weeks.)
Rehearsals at The Friends School Music Department with Rachel, Amanda and Sarah.

Saturday/Sunday 25^th/ 26th – The Farrall Centre at The Friends School, North Hobart
These will be intensive rehearsals with Rachel and Amanda working with each group individually on stage at the Farrall centre. Sarah will also be there to assist.

Thursday 30^th June – Federation Concert Hall, Hobart
5.00 pm -10.00 pm
Soundcheck/rehearsals, specific group times to still be determined

Friday 1^st July – Federation Concert Hall 
4.30 pm-6.30 pm – Soundcheck
7:00 pm-10.00 pm – Performance

Song allocations work on a first-come-first-served basis, Please select your preferred three songs. As soon as we hear from you, we can prepare your song sheet, and vocal and audio tracks. These will be sent to your choral leader.

Welcome to our series of instructional videos where Rachel will go through some of the key areas of choral singing, to help you prepare for your moment in the spotlight. Please share these videos with your choir members.

Which voice type are you? 4.09 minutes

Vocal Warm Up 2.59 minutes

Simple singing exercise to get us in the zone

FOV Practice & Performance Tips 4.02 minutes

Reading Music 1.56 minutes

Please send us the following items so we can prepare your promotional profile as part of your registration. The festival will deliver a profile piece via their newsletter and across social media based on the information provided.

This year we will continue our partnership with Hobart City Mission. We will contact you when the Fundraising Page is live.

This year there will be prizes for:

Best Debut Choir | Best Choralography | Best Costume/Outfit | Best Overall Choir

The winning choir will get a ticket to any performance in the 2022 program, subject to availability. (One ticket per choral team member). They will be invited to sing at the Festival of Voices Grand Finale Concert on Sunday 10th July, and the opportunity to sing at the Festival singers lounge.

There is also a very fancy trophy!

Check out our ever evolving program to bookmark your favourite event. Choral, contemporary and cabaret performances and workshops will be presented by a beautiful blend of Tasmanian and interstate artists.

Visit www.festivalofvoices.com to see what tempts you!

Here are three ways to approach your rehearsal schedule. Use these as guides to plan your rehearsals, or proceed in a way that best suits your choir.

During the next few months there will be many opportunities for publicity within our festival. Naturally we wish to include our Corporate Choir Challenge. Normally this involves featuring on our festival social media platforms, enews, website and external media. Rather than seek permission for each occasion, could you please indicate if all members of your choir are happy to be included in this publicity.

Photo and video will be captured by our official festival photographers on competition day OR by Jen Murnaghan, Marketing Manager.

To familiarise yourselves with how the night will run we thought it might help to provide an overview. Of course we will guide you on the night to ensure a smooth production.

Each team will have ten minutes to perform, which will be essentially be split into 5 minutes performance and 5 minutes travel to and from stage.  ABC Hobart will MC the evening.

Our adjudicators will use the time in between each performance to assess and make good use of the evening.We will have a short interval and then approximately 5-10 minutes after the last performance for the adjudicators to make their final decisions. Then all adjudicators will come to the stage to provide their feedback and announce the winners of each category.

The Adjudicators will include:
Kate Albury – Australian Choral Conductor and Clinician.
Paul Jarman – Australian Composer, Conductor and all round good guy.

Here is an amazing resource from Tania de Jong AM for all of you interested in WHY singing is so good for us! We highly recommend watching her Ted talk too.

https://www.creativityaustralia.org.au/research/choir-research/

Tania de Jong AM makes the case that people singing together can change the brain. Pushing the idea that creativity is the strategic tool of the 21st century, she says how our voices have been silenced and that it’s not doing us any good. She explains how singing is a survival mechanism, how it makes our hearts beat together and can help heal strokes and depression.

With singing, and the potential she believes it has, Tania dedicates herself to enhancing and promoting ingenuity and founded Creativity Australia and Creative Universe to do so. As a leading Australian soprano and through ‘With One Voice’, Tania works with disadvantaged communities. In 2008 she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for services to the arts and for the establishment and development of arts enrichment programs for schools and communities..

A fabulous article about freestyle singing.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/21/appalling-beautiful-liberating-its-time-to-reclaim-freestyle-singing